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Adrienne McCarthy continues to make a lot of sense

February 28, 2012

Adrienne McCarthy listened to the entire dog and phoney show the selectmen put on last night and she called it for what it was. She cautioned that taxpayers may not wish to be as strident as their town officials, who are now convinced they are paupers, when just a few weeks ago suspended town manager Mike Coughlin and Mary Gallagher, director of finance, told selectmen things were tight but it looked like they could get through the year without any deficit.

Selectmen are now convinced they have to do a level-funded budget for FY13 and all of a sudden acting town manager Mike Milanoski has discovered the town is facing a structural $350,000 deficit this year…and he is foraging through town hall looking for unspent funds. This in spite of $650,000 in new growth. But then – didn’t the town just assume $500,000 in water dept in order to pump up water’s books for their RFP? Oh, that probably has nothing to do with it. Wait a second and DeCaprio will tell us!Probably any second now.

AND. OH MY GOD. The Town has a 32M in unfunded pensions, health insurance. Yep. It’s still there. And I can tell you this. As hard as Capital Budget works, and even if Budget Planning attends 1000 meetings, they are not going to put a dent in that little honey until the state legislature works its magic. Perhaps it’s Coughlin’s fault? Milanoski blamed the out-of-sight legal budget on him last night. But I think the selectmen had a lot to do with that with all the designer counsels they hired. Coughlin kept pushing them to use town counsel.

Well, now water commissioners want a 10-year Water RFP, and the inspector general has supposedly blessed it and Peter DeCaprio, who out of the goodness of his heart, not because he has to, is not going to vote to decide the winner of the 10-year contract, which is not the 20-year RFP Coughlin sent to the Inspector General. It is a different one. No one has yet seen this RFP – selectmen haven’t anyway. But they cheered DeCaprio anyway.

Monday, March 26 the citizens of Cohasset will be invited to the high school auditorium to meet DeCaprio’s tar baby. It will start at 7PM…a two-hour presentation. Perhaps it will be on TV. He says he is pleased with it. He projects we will get $1.5 million up front and it will generate $500,000 in cash every year after 10 years. And that’s all we know and all the selectmen, who love it to death, know.

In related news – selectmen voted to allow the suspended town manager back in town hall to pay his taxes and such. Initially, they had banished him from all public buildings. That was a bit harsh, I thought. Acting TM Milanoski threatened to call the police on him Monday when he tried to return his computer. Milanoski found Coughlin to be so dangerous that he had to walk him to the parking lot and did not return to town hall until he saw Coughlin drive away. Such drama. You know, you sail by this sleepy looking little town on the Atlantic Ocean and think, what a perfectly pleasant place to live. And then you land.

The point is this. There was absolutely nothing wrong about our now suspended town manager Mike Coughlin. He walked into a financial pit and worked like a dog to put things together. He found us a terrific director of finance. He made all the DOR deadlines. He tried to build a team. But he made the mistake of worrying out loud about the 20-year concession agreement the water department was looking for. And, alas, he stuck his nose into Cat Dam and ruffled many important feathers.

Did you know there is only one Adrienne MacCarthy in the entire United States?

I wish she would run for selectmen this year. The last day to take out papers in March 22.

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10 comments for “Adrienne McCarthy continues to make a lot of sense”

By the way, Peter, when you schedule a water comission meeting at your house, make room for the public to attend. You don’t have a valid reason to have closed meetings.

Mary A. Parsons

March 1, 2012 at 5:32 pm

Peter,
The only one personalizing this is YOU. You flip flop back and forth in your posts. Bear Hill has nothing to do with the current issue. There are no sides here. Read what the editors at the Patriot Ledger have to say about you.

EDITORIAL —
“Cohasset Water Commission Chairman Peter DeCaprio’s stated interest in making sure the town’s new water department contract is thoroughly, independently and publicly vetted suggests he wants what’s best for the town.

Such laudable ideals might lead town residents to cut him some slack when they learned that he recently served beer at a public meeting to discuss that contract. It could be dismissed as an isolated error in judgment; an embarrassing mistake akin to the bra trick that last year forced Abington School Committee chairman and amateur magician Russell FitzGerald to resign.

Yet DeCaprio’s indiscretion was more than just a lapse of decorum and it is only one of several actions that suggest his leadership of the department deserves closer scrutiny.

Among the most troubling issues is his misinterpretation of the state Open Meeting Law, which requires a detailed agenda be posted before a public meeting and that minutes of the meeting be recorded. The agenda posted for the Jan. 23 meeting at which beer was served offered only a vague reference to “RFP Preparation.” DeCaprio has defended his actions by erroneously describing the meeting as “informal” and “private,” despite the presence of a quorum of water commission members.

He told our reporter earlier this week that he only filed a meeting agenda “to play it safe” and suggested that, if he wanted, he could have held the meeting in the privacy of his own home. Other DeCaprio comments also make it seem as if he sees the water commission as a private entity and himself as its CEO.

“We have had many, many, many private, catered gatherings at the water company, and we’ll likely to have more in the future,” he said recently when questioned about beer at the Jan. 23 meeting.

At the very least this mind-set suggests the state Attorney General’s Office should be called in for the type of informational meetings it conducts when public officials need help understanding the rules regarding public meetings.

As if this were not enough to hint at problems in the water department, another DeCaprio decision was recently challenged. At a meeting Tuesday, town officials questioned his hiring of a private law firm to do work for the water department. The firm, according to Selectmen Chairman Edwin G. Carr, is one that has previously represented DeCaprio in cases unrelated to town business. Carr also said the hiring of legal counsel must first be approved by the selectmen in a public proceeding. DeCaprio disagreed and dismissed attacks on his actions as “blatantly political.”

Despite his umbrage, there are reasonable questions as to whether his commitment to the town’s welfare and the integrity of its water department is matched by an understanding of – or commitment to – the rules and laws that govern how the people’s business is conducted.

This is not about four bottles of beer or possible bad blood between town officials. It’s about not treating a public entity like a private club.”